Semiconductor memory devices are used extensively to store data. Static and Dynamic Random Access Memory (SRAM and DRAM) are widely used in many applications. SRAM typically consists of six transistors and hence has a large cell size. However, unlike DRAM, it does not require periodic refresh operation to maintain its memory state. Conventional DRAM cells consist of one-transistor and one-capacitor (1T/1C) structure. As the 1T/1C memory cell features are scaled, difficulties arise due to the necessity of maintaining the capacitance value.
DRAM based on the electrically floating body effect has been proposed (see for example “A Capacitor-less 1T-DRAM Cell”, S. Okhonin et al., pp. 85-87, IEEE Electron Device Letters, vol. 23, no. 2, February 2002 (“Okhonin-1”), which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirely and “Memory Design Using One-Transistor Gain Cell on SOI”, T. Ohsawa et al., pp. 152-153, Tech. Digest, 2002 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, February 2002) (“Ohsawa-1”), which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirely. Such a memory eliminates the capacitor used in conventional 1T/1C memory cell, and thus is easier to scale to smaller feature size. In addition, such memory allows for a smaller cell size compared to the conventional 1T/1C memory cell. Both Okhonin-1 and Ohsawa-1 describe DRAM memory cell comprising a single standard metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) having a gate terminal, two source/drain terminals, and a floating body fabricated using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Oshawa-1 further describes a current mirror sense amplifier which compares the current of a sensed cell to the average of two reference cells, one written to logic-0 and the other written to logic-1.
In a floating body memory, the different memory states are represented by different levels of charge in the floating body. In Okhonin-1 and Ohsawa-1, a single bit (two voltage levels) in a standard MOSFET is contemplated. Others have described using more than two voltage levels stored in the floating body of a standard MOSFET allowing for more than a single binary bit of storage in a memory cell like, for example, “The Multistable Charge-Controlled Memory Effect in SOI Transistors at Low Temperatures”, Tack et al., pp. 1373-1382, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, vol. 37, May 1990 (“Tack”) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirely, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,345 “Multi-bit memory cell having electrically floating body transistor, and method of programming and reading same” to Okhonin, et al (“Okhonin-2”). Tack describes obtaining more than two states in the floating body of a standard MOSFET built in SOI by manipulating the “back gate”—a conductive layer below the bottom oxide (BOX) of the silicon tub the MOSFET occupies. Okhonin-2 discloses attaining more than two voltage states in the floating body utilizing the intrinsic bipolar junction transistor (BJT) formed between the two source/drain regions of the standard MOSFET to generate read and write currents.
In memory design in general, sensing and amplifying the state of a memory cell is an important aspect of the design. This is true as well of floating body DRAM memories. Different aspects and approaches to performing a read operation are known in the art like, for example, the ones disclosed in “A Design of a Capacitor-less 1T-DRAM Cell Using Gate-Induced Drain Leakage (GIDL) Current for Low-power and High-speed Embedded Memory”, Yoshida et al., pp. 913-918, International Electron Devices Meeting, 2003 (“Yoshida”) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirely; in U.S. Pat. No. 7,301,803 “Bipolar reading technique for a memory cell having an electrically floating body transistor” (“Okhonin-3”) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirely; and in “An 18.5 ns 128 Mb SOI DRAM with a Floating Body Cell”, Ohsawa et al., pp. 458-459, 609, IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2005 (“Ohsawa-2”) which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirely. Both Yoshida and Okhonin-3 disclose a method of generating a read current from a standard MOSFET floating body memory cell manufactured in SOI-CMOS processes. Okhonin-3 describes using the intrinsic BJT transistor inherent in the standard MOSFET structure to generate the read current. Ohsawa-2 discloses a detailed sensing scheme for use with standard MOSFET floating body memory cells implemented in both SOI and standard bulk silicon.
Writing a logic-0 to a floating body DRAM cell known in the art is straight forward. Either the source line or the bit line is pulled low enough to forward bias the junction with the floating body removing the hole charge, if any. Writing a logic-1 typically may be accomplished using either a band-to-band tunneling method (also known as Gate Induced Drain Leakage or GIDL) or an impact ionization method.
In floating body DRAM cells, writing a logic-0 is straightforward (simply forward biasing either the source or drain junction of the standard MOSFET will evacuate all of the majority carriers in the floating body writing a logic-0) while different techniques have been explored for writing a logic-1. A method of writing a logic-1 through a gate induced band-to-band tunneling mechanism, as described for example in Yoshida. The general approach in Yoshida is to apply an appropriately negative voltage to the word line (gate) terminal of the memory cell while applying an appropriately positive voltage to the bit line terminal (drain) and grounding the source line terminal (source) of the selected memory cell. The negative voltage on WL terminal and the positive voltage on BL terminal creates a strong electric field between the drain region of the MOSFET transistor and the floating body region in the proximity of the gate (hence the “gate induced” portion of GIDL) in the selected memory cell. This bends the energy bands sharply upward near the gate and drain junction overlap region, causing electrons to tunnel from the valence band to the conduction band, leaving holes in the valence band. The electrons which tunnel across the energy band become the drain leakage current (hence the “drain leakage” portion of GIDL), while the holes are injected into floating body region 24 and become the hole charge that creates the logic-1 state. This process is well known in the art and is illustrated in Yoshida (specifically FIGS. 2 and 6 on page 3 and FIG. 9 on page 4).
A method of writing a logic-1 through impact ionization is described, for example, in “A New 1T DRAM Cell with Enhanced Floating Body Effect”, Lin and Chang, pp. 23-27, IEEE International Workshop on Memory Technology, Design, and Testing, 2006, (“Lin”) which is incorporated in its entirety by reference herein. The general approach in Lin is to bias both the gate and bit line (drain) terminals of the memory cell to be written at a positive voltage while grounding the source line (source). Raising the gate to a positive voltage has the effect of raising the voltage potential of the floating body region due to capacitive coupling across the gate insulating layer. This in conjunction with the positive voltage on the drain terminal causes the intrinsic n-p-n bipolar transistor (drain (n=collector) to floating body (p=base) to source (n=emitter)) to turn on regardless of whether or not a logic-1 or logic-0 is stored in the memory cell. In particular, the voltage across the reversed biased p-n junction between the floating body (base) and the drain (collector) will cause a small current to flow across the junction. Some of the current will be in the form of hot carriers accelerated by the electric field across the junction. These hot carriers will collide with atoms in the semiconductor lattice which will generate hole-electron pairs in the vicinity of the junction. The electrons will be swept into the drain (collector) by the electric field and become bit line (collector) current, while the holes will be swept into the floating body region, becoming the hole charge that creates the logic-1 state.
Much of the work to date has been done on SOI, which is generally more expensive than a bulk silicon process. Some effort has been made to reduce costs of manufacturing floating body DRAMs by starting with bulk silicon. An example of a process to selectively form buried isolation region is described in “Silicon on Replacement Insulator (SRI) Floating Body Cell (FBC) Memory”, S. Kim et al., pp. 165-166, Tech Digest, Symposium on VLSI Technology, 2010, (“S_Kim”) which is incorporated in its entirety by reference herein. In S_Kim bulk silicon transistors are formed. Then the floating bodies are isolated by creating a silicon-on-replacement-insulator (SRI) structure. The layer of material under the floating body cells is selectively etched away and replaced with insulator creating an SOI type of effect. An alternate processing approach to selectively creating a gap and then filling it with an insulator is described in “A 4-bit Double SONOS Memory (DSM) with 4 Storage Nodes per Cell for Ultimate Multi-Bit Operation”, Oh et al., pp. 58-59, Tech Digest, Symposium on VLSI Technology, 2006 (“Oh”) which is incorporated in its entirety by reference herein.
Most work to date has involved standard lateral MOSFETs in which the source and drain are disposed at the surface of the semiconductor where they are coupled to the metal system above the semiconductor surface. A floating body DRAM cell using a vertical MOSFET has been described in “Vertical Double Gate Z-RAM technology with remarkable low voltage operation for DRAM application”, J. Kim et al., pp. 163-164, Symposium of VLSI Technology, 2010, (“J_Kim”) which is incorporated in its entirety by reference herein. In J_Kim, the floating body is bounded by a gate on two sides with a source region above and a buried drain region below. The drain is connected to a tap region, which allows a connection between a conductive plug at the surface to the buried drain region.
An alternate method of using a standard lateral MOSFET in a floating body DRAM cell is described in co-pending and commonly owned U.S. Patent Application Publication 2010/0034041 to Widjaja (“Widjaja”), which is incorporated in its entirety by reference herein. Widjaja describes a standard lateral MOSFET floating body DRAM cell realized in bulk silicon with a buried well and a substrate which forms a vertical silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) with a P1-N2-P3-N4 formed by the substrate, the buried well, the floating body, and the source (or drain) region of the MOSFET respectively. This structure behaves like two bipolar junction transistor (BJT) devices coupled together—one an n-p-n (N2-P3-N4) and one a p-n-p (P3-N2-P1)—which can be manipulated to control the charge on the floating body region (P3).
The construction and operation of standard MOSFET devices is well known in the art. An exemplary standard metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) device 100 is shown in FIG. 52A. MOSFET device 100 consists of a substrate region of a first conductivity type 82 (shown as p-type in the figure), and first and second regions 84 and 86 of a second conductivity type (shown as n-type) on the surface 88, along with a gate 90, separated from the semiconductor surface region by an insulating layer 92. Gate 90 is positioned in between the regions 84 and 86. Insulating layers 96 can be used to separate one transistor device from other devices on the silicon substrate 82.
As shown in FIG. 52B, a standard MOSFET device 100A may also consist of a well region 94A of a first conductivity type (shown as p-type in the figure) in a substrate region 82A of a second conductivity type (shown as n-type in the figure), with first and second regions 84A and 86A of a second conductivity type on the surface 88A. In addition, a gate 90A, separated from the surface region 88A by an insulating layer 92A, is also present in between the first and second regions 84A and 86A. Insulating layers 96A can be used to separate one transistor device from other devices in the well region 94A. MOSFET devices 100 and 100A are both constructed in bulk silicon CMOS technology.
As shown in FIG. 52C, a standard MOSFET device 100B is shown constructed out of silicon-on-insulator technology. MOSFET device 100B consists of a tub region of a first conductivity type 82B (shown as p-type in the figure), and first and second regions 84B and 86B of a second conductivity type (shown as n-type) on the surface 88B, along with a gate 90B, separated from the semiconductor surface region by an insulating layer 92B. Gate 90B is positioned in between the regions 84B and 86B. The tub region 82B is isolated from other devices on the sides by insulating layers 96B and on the bottom by insulating layer 83B. Optionally, there may be a conductive layer affixed to the bottom of insulating layer 83B (not shown) which may be used as a “back gate” by coupling through the insulating layer 83B to the tub region 82B.
The transistors 100, 100A, and 100B are all called n-channel transistors because when turned on by applying an appropriate voltage to the gates 90, 90A and 90B respectively, the p-material under the gates is inverted to behave like n-type conductivity type for as long as the gate voltage is applied. This allows conduction between the two n-type regions 84 and 86 in MOSFET 100, 84A and 86A in MOSFET 100A and 84B and 86B in MOSFET 100B. As is well known in the art, the conductivity types of all the regions may be reversed (i.e., the first conductivity type regions become n-type and the second conductivity type regions become p-type) to produce p-channel transistors. In general, n-channel transistors are be preferred for use in memory cells (of all types and technologies) because of the greater mobility of the majority carrier electrons (as opposed to the majority carrier holes in p-channel transistors) allowing more read current for the same sized transistor, but p-channel transistors may be used as a matter of design choice.